State Sovereignty Supporter Pushes Federal Mandate in TN Legislature

Rep. Debra Maggart of Hendersonville sees no double standard resulting from her current support of a George W. Bush-era juvenile sex-offender mandate from the federal government. Keeping sex offenders at bay is entirely different than expanding public education or government-run health care, she says.

Earlier this year, Republican state Rep. Debra Young Maggart co-sponsored a resolution demanding that the federal government refrain from further burdening Tennessee with unwarranted and potentially unconstitutional policy mandates.

But earlier this month, Rep. Maggart and Sen. Diane Black, R-Gallatin, expressed their interest in legislatively obligating the State of Tennessee to embrace an as-yet unfulfilled federal mandate, signed by George W. Bush, that critics say violates just the sort of constitutional principles lawmakers like Maggart saw fit to reiterate in their state sovereignty resolution last session.

The federal mandate at issue here is part of the Adam Walsh Child Protection Safety Act of 2006 (pdf). Among other things, it demands harsher treatment of juveniles found guilty of committing sex crimes — in particular, by posting youthful offenders’ pictures, names, birthdays and addresses online.

“The adoption of this legislation would put Tennessee into compliance with the requirements for juveniles to be placed on state’s Sex Offender Registries under the Adam Walsh Act which was scheduled to go into effect in 2009,” according to a press release issued Dec. 7 by Maggart and Black. “Tennessee was awarded over $50 million in Byrne Grant funding last year, 10 percent of which could be in jeopardy unless the state adheres to these requirements.”

Failing to abide by the Act could result in a loss of state law enforcement subsidies of $750,000 to $940,000 next year, the Tennessee Office of Criminal Justice Programs reports.

“Is it a mandate? Yes,” said Maggart.

But she sees little in her past advocacy for the sovereignty resolution — combined with her support now for the Bush-era federal mandate — to indicate she’s guilty of a political double standard.

“I know we need this money,” Maggart told TNReport.com. “It is a mandate, but again, it is what we’re operating under, and I think that we should have uniform laws on sex offenders across the country because sex offenders are really clever.”

The Tennessee sovereignty resolution, House Joint Resolution 108 (pdf), was really meant to ward off unfunded mandates such as government-run health care or expansions of education programs, Maggart said. It wasn’t necessarily intended to label all the federal government’s directives to the states as bad.

“I just think they’re two different animals,” she said. Of the federal health legislation under consideration in Congress right now, Maggart said, “The costs are going to be out of this world.”

“But keeping sex offenders out of our community where they can prey on our children,” she added, “is a completely different thing.”

Michael Hough, a public safety specialist for the Washington D.C.-based American Legislative Exchange Council, said that elements of the Walsh Act, particularly the juvenile offender provisions, were upsetting to state lawmakers, many of them conservatives, from around the country who gathered in Atlanta last summer to discuss the law.

“Everyone basically agreed that parts of the law were very good, but — as happens a lot when the federal government passes things — they don’t really understand what’s going to happen when it is put out in the states.” said Hough, whose organization tends to promote state-level, small-government, market-oriented policy solutions.

Hough said many lawmakers complained of the costs associated with implementing much of the Walsh Act — that they’re in fact even higher than the potential Byrne grant cuts that would result from noncompliance.

Likewise, the National Conference of State Legislatures has stated that the Walsh Act works to “preempt many state laws and create an unfunded mandate for states.”

The Act was also found unconstitutional in April 2008 by a U.S. District Court judge in Florida, who declared that under the general reasoning inherent in the Walsh Act, “virtually all criminal activity would be subject to the power of the federal government.”

“Surely our founding fathers did not contemplate such a broad view of federalism,” wrote the judge.

His opinion was later overturned on appeal by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which said the provisions of the United States Constitution allowing for regulation of interstate commerce permitted Congress to pass laws that “track those offenders who move from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.”

“This is not about kids playing doctor when they’re 10 years old,” said Maggart. “The needs of the community to be protected by a 16-year-old that’s a rapist, it outweighs everything.”

But Nashville defense attorney Brent Horst, himself a former sex-crimes prosecutor in Florida, said situations where children “playing doctor” crosses a line could result in an individual being publicly labeled as a heinous sort of criminal for decades.

“No one wants to be soft on sex offenders,” said Horst, but requiring that juvenile offenders be added to the adult registry is an “incredibly stupid, unfair and unjust” idea. It could end up subjecting a “a poor kid who’s just a normal teenager experimenting with his sexuality” to years of societal contempt, he said.

“It’s all about the (federal) money,” Horst added.

If approved by both chambers and OK’d by the governor, the new law would require juvenile offenders to register if they have been found guilty of crimes such as rape, aggravated sexual battery, aggravated rape, rape of a child, aggravated rape of a child or an attempt to commit of those crimes.

Juveniles convicted as adults under Tennessee law must already register with the sex offender website.

Maggart, who, like Sen. Black, is from Sumner County, was the No. 2 co-sponsor of the HJR108 sovereignty resolution. A very popular measure, it passed 85-2 in the House and 31-0 in the Senate. Black didn’t appear to vote on the legilsation.

HJR108 reaffirmed Tennessee’s claim as a self-governing jurisdictional entity in keeping with the Tenth Amendment, which reads, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

HJR108 also lamented that while “the federal government was created by the states specifically to be an agent of the states…today, in 2009, the states are demonstrably treated as agents of the federal government.”

Similar measures were enacted in several other states, but on June 23 Phil Bredesen put pen to paper and made Tennessee’s the first such resolution in the country signed by a governor.

The resolution’s chief sponsor last spring, Rep. Susan Lynn, R-Mt. Juliet, says she tends to agree with Maggart — that the Hendersonville Republican’s effort to list juveniles on public sex offender electronic bulletin boards is more an effort to improve public safety in Tennessee than an attempt to suck up to Washington, D.C.

“This would be a Tennessee law to put juveniles on a sex offender registry,” said Lynn, who supports the bill. “It would happen to be coincidence, as far as I’m concerned, that the federal government is mandating this.”

The representative is right, these are two different things, anyone can see that. She wants to protect kids, that’s the priority here, not whether she sponsored a resolution that it would have been political suicide in Tennessee not to to support.

[…] House lawmakers heard more than three hours of testimony last Tuesday on a piece of legislation introduced by Rep. Debra Maggart, R-Hendersonville, who says it is necessary both to protect the public as well as line Tennessee up to receive a bigger chunk of federal law enforcement subsidies. […]

[…] a Gallatin Republican, is sponsoring the bill — which aims at making the state hew to a 2006 federal mandate handed down by the Republican-controlled Congress and President Bush — and told members of […]

Patrick, its not about “protecting the children” its about politics, registries often while useful do more harm than good, things such as temporarily restraining a child who is being disorderly, peeing in the bushes, an 17 year old sleeping with a 14 year girl or boy, even sending a picture to a boyfriend or girlfriend while inappropriate can land a person into the “sex” offender registry, even non-sexual , if its not about politics then how does it explain here other supposed positions, obviously patrick you should not mistake the words of politicians for honesty.

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